The Murder of Sara Barton

Lance McMillian is a lawyer who gave up the courtroom for the classroom. For over a decade, he has taught Constitutional Law to future lawyers at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School. Lance is married to Justice Carla Wong McMillian of the Georgia Supreme Court. The Murder of Sara Barton is his debut novel.

Stories are powerful teaching tools because they marry information and context. Jesus taught in parables for a reason. Legal fiction, if done well, can make law more real by showing how law affects characters we know and care about. Sixty years later, To Kill A Mockingbird remains the gold standard for using the fictional courtroom to depict real-life truths.

Lance's writing career began as a weekly columnist for The Daily Tar Heel while an undergraduate at UNC. As a UGA law student, he also contributed columns to The Red and Black. In the academic realm, his scholarly work about lawyers and pop culture has appeared in leading law journals. He also contributed a book chapter to the American Bar Association's project Lawyers in Your Living Room: Law on Television, which included chapters by actors Sam Waterston and James Woods.